The present invention relates generally to computer processing, and more particularly to techniques to instantiate entitlements into contracts.
Contract creation and management are ubiquitous challenges faced by many industries and organizations. In many industries, complex products and/or services may be offered, and these offerings may be associated with complex pricing structures, entitlements, billing and service delivery requirements, and so on. To simplify the contracting and management processes, standard contracts with standards terms may be created and used for these offerings. However, these “canned” contracts are not acceptable for many organizations because of their inflexible nature.
On the other extreme, customized contracts with individually selected and tailored terms can provide the most flexibility. However, such customized contracts are typically time-consuming to draft and even more challenging to manage. In many instances, this total flexibility is not necessary or even desirable.
Many contracts include entitlements (i.e., benefits, such as services) as well as obligations (i.e., liabilities, such as monthly payments). Entitlements typically comprise certain “coverage” that a customer is entitled to receive under the contract (e.g., services, discounts, and so on). Entitlements may be defined to cover one or more products and/or assets for a particular period of time.
In general, a contract may be drafted to include any number of terms, and each term may be drafted to cover any matter of importance between contracting parties. For example, a contract may define certain pricing structure, cover certain services, offer certain preventive maintenance, and so on. For each of these terms, the scope of coverage may differ depending on various factors such as, for example, the parties to the contract, the price paid, and so on. Contracts may thus be viewed as comprising unstructured information of various types.
The task of creating contracts that meet the needs and requirements of an organization can be challenging. The challenge often magnifies as the complexity and/or the number of product and/or service offerings increase. Thus, techniques that can assist an administrator or an end-user (e.g., a sales associate) to efficiently form contracts (with the proper entitlements) and which are sufficiently flexible to cover most if not all contracting situations, are highly desirable.